Look at how salty this European Council on Foreign Relations hack is about the situation. You can bet if the tables were turned she would be singing the praises of the Glorious Superpower coming to the aid of the world's poor farmers and only asking for a few diplomatic favours in return. All this despite a mortal enemy being the one responsible for the shortage - and we're magnanimous enough to supply them too!

You have to laugh...

*****

https://ecfr.eu/article/sowing-discord-how-russia-is-making-the-most-of-a-global-fertiliser-shortage/

Sowing discord: How Russia is making the most of a global fertiliser shortage

Amid fears of an Iran war-fuelled global food crisis, Moscow is weaponising access to its fertiliser supplies in both Western countries and developing economies

Agathe Demarais @agathedemarais.com on Bluesky
Senior Policy Fellow

Commentary 15 April 2026 3 minute read


Earlier in April, US president Donald Trump announced a naval blockade of Iranian ports, compounding disruptions to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—the maritime route through which around one-third of global seaborne fertiliser supplies flow. Russia could not have asked for a better gift. The country is the second-biggest producer and largest exporter of fertilisers, and these shipments do not transit via Hormuz. The Kremlin is now weaponising access to these supplies in a bid to curry favour in the global south and secure Western sanctions relief.

Russia’s crisis-diplomacy playbook

Developing economies are particularly reliant on Russian fertilisers, for good reason. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries have been imposing restrictions on purchases of Russian fertilisers, pushing Moscow to diversify its export routes towards the global south. This strategy has paid off. In 2025, Russian firms supplied roughly one-quarter of the fertiliser imports of agricultural giants Brazil and India.

Amid growing fears that disruptions through Hormuz could trap fertiliser shipments and fuel a global food crisis, the Kremlin has sensed an opportunity: in late March, the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, Alexander Venediktov, stated that Moscow is ready to send fertilisers to the global south. This generous offer comes with a catch: Venediktov hinted that those receiving fertilisers would need to support the development of Russian-led groupings, such as BRICS, the defence-oriented Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. In other words, Moscow is now attaching strings to its fertiliser shipments.

Russia’s crisis diplomacy playbook is nothing new. During the covid-19 pandemic, Moscow weaponised access to its Sputnik V vaccine, offering doses to global south countries in exchange for economic deals or political alignment. This strategy was perhaps most obvious in Latin America. In Bolivia, for example, Moscow linked vaccine deliveries to Gazprom’s development of the Incahuasi gas field and to Rosatom’s construction of a nuclear technology research centre. A few months later, this strategy paid off: Bolivia was among the five Latin American countries that abstained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations (the four others were Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela).

In most countries, Russia’s vaccine diplomacy ended up in a failure. Delivery delays, a lack of transparency over clinical data and doubts around the quality of some vaccine batches fuelled general hesitancy towards the Russian-made jab, which never received approval from the World Health Organisation. Yet this sober analysis eclipses a broader point: for Russia, vaccine deliveries never really mattered. For the Kremlin, vaccine diplomacy was a public-relations operation. What counted for Moscow was to be seen as coming to the rescue of the global south at a time when rich economies were perceived as hoarding vaccines. In a similar fashion, what matters for the Kremlin nowadays is to claim that it will send fertilisers to the global south. Actual deliveries are an afterthought.

Russia does not have the capacity to beef up fertiliser exports anyway. The Togliatti-Odesa pipeline, which moves ammonia to Black Sea export terminals, has remained offline since 2022 (the pipeline runs through active combat areas in Ukraine and has suffered extensive damage). What’s more, Ukrainian drone strikes often hit Russian fertiliser plants, further degrading production capacity. Just one week before Venediktov made his generous offer, the Kremlin imposed strict caps on fertiliser exports in a bid to prevent domestic shortages. This highlights how Russian offers to come to the rescue of developing economies are moot: at best, Moscow can replace Gulf-made supplies only at the margin.

Pressure on the West

Russia’s fertiliser diplomacy is not confined to the global south: it also targets America and Europe. But this time, Moscow’s goal is different: securing sanctions relief. This strategy is already paying off in the US: in late March Washington lifted sanctions on three Belarusian potash makers, including the world’s second-largest producer Belaruskali. It is hard to imagine that the timing—amid growing fears of rising fertiliser prices and a potential food crisis—was incidental.

The European Union could soon be under intense pressure to follow suit. In late March the French food safety body revealed that the French population absorbs high levels of cadmium, a metal linked to cancer which is found in Moroccan-made fertilisers. This development suits the Kremlin perfectly. Under the guise of an environmental crusade, Russian fertiliser giant PhosAgro has long been pushing for a tightening of EU cadmium limits in a bid to promote EU purchases of low-cadmium supplies from Russia’s Kola peninsula.

This leaves the EU with no good option. The bloc can either ease restrictions on Russian fertilisers—thereby funding Moscow’s war machine and dismantling EU sanctions—or stick to high-cadmium supplies, fuelling a health crisis. Russia will likely use France, where the narrative that sanctions hurt Europe is mainstream, as a pressure point to divide Europeans.

Whatever happens in Iranian waters, Russia’s fertiliser diplomacy will cement the Kremlin’s narrative that a US-led war is starving the global south

Western governments never imagined that fertilisers could carry such strategic weight, and they have no playbook to counter Russia’s fertiliser diplomacy. The fate of Hormuz remains uncertain, but seen from the Kremlin, fertiliser diplomacy is already a resounding success before a single extra shipment has even left Russian ports (if it ever does). Whatever happens in Iranian waters, Russia’s fertiliser diplomacy will cement the Kremlin’s narrative that a US-led war is starving the global south and that sanctions relaxation is the only viable option for Western economies. For Moscow, this is a golden scenario—whether Hormuz reopens in just three days or in three years.